Federal Judge Rejects Google Books Deal 234
14erCleaner writes "US Circuit Judge Denny Chin has rejected a $125 million settlement between Google Books and the author's guild that would have allowed Google to publish all out-of-work fiction online. Chin has previously ruled more favorably on this case."
Let's clear something up... (Score:5, Informative)
2.4 Non-Exclusivity of Authorizations.
The authorizations granted to Google in this Amended Settlement Agreement are non-exclusive only, and nothing in this Amended Settlement Agreement shall be construed as limiting any Rightsholderâ(TM)s right to authorize, through the Registry or otherwise, any Person, including direct competitors of Google, to use his, her or its Books or Inserts in any way, including ways identical to those provided for under this Amended Settlement Agreement.
Google was not trying to get exclusive rights to anything. Anyone and everyone else would have been free to scan in books and sell them exactly like Google wanted to do.
Everyone posting here about how evil Google is for wanting exclusive rights to sell these books is wrong. None of them have read the proposed settlement and they have no clue what they're talking about. They're spreading FUD and you idiots are falling for it.
Re:Let's clear something up... (Score:5, Informative)
* Openly commiting a massive infringement (note that non-massive infringement would not be sufficient)
* Being sued by the Author's Guild
* Having that suit granted a class action status
* Having a large enough legal team you can fight the class action lawyers
* Convincing the class action lawyers that they should settle into a business deal instead of cashing out
* Ensuring that this deal is sweeter for the lawyers than Google's or they'll just keep monopoly rents through Google
Yep. There's no exclusive rights here at all.
Re:unobtainable books. (Score:4, Informative)
As a librarian, this makes my head hurt.
I guarantee you, those books are sitting on a shelf in a library someplace. Probably within a thousand miles of you. And we have this lovely thing called "interlibrary loan," an arrangement under which you can walk into your local library and borrow those books from the library that has them, either for free or for a small processing fee, depending on how badly the library's budget has fared in recent cuts. We saved those books for you. That's what we do. Please come borrow them.
As for the future, well, digital copies are actually a LOT harder to preserve long term. I myself have files that I can no longer open, because I no longer have a copy of the word processor "Sprint" running on MS-DOS 5.0. They're less than twenty years old, and are essentially unusable.
By contrast, I once held and read a hand-written breviary from fourteenth century Italy, a good six and half centuries old and still usable. If we could find a way to archive digital information which would guarantee its usability a mere century from now, I'd rest a lot more easily.
Re:lame (Score:4, Informative)
Copyrights were created so that authors could profit from their works for a time, under a protected monopoly, in exchange for releasing their works into the public domain after the period of their profit.
by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
Once dead, this no longer applies. Nowhere in there is mentioned estates, and the original application of copyright specifically ceased at death.
From Copyright Act of 1790:
to secure to the said authors, if they shall survive the term first mentioned